The Best Web Hosting Services in 2024 – Top 6 Compared and Reviewed

The best web hosting service providers in your budget let you manage your online address, whether personal or business, along with aiding in traffic management. With the best hosting platform, you’ll not only be able to register your domain but also manage content online and access email and cloud hosting coupled with different layers of security.

Finding the best web hosting for your needs can be challenging, given the number of choices at your disposal. To make it easy, we’ve researched and compiled a list of the best web hosting service providers in your budget based on criteria like uptime guarantee, speed, number of servers, customer service, data security, and other auxiliary services offered. Read on to learn why platforms like Cloudways, Domain.com, and Bluehost are a notch ahead of the rest.

The Best Web Hosting Platforms 2024 | Quick Answer

Cloudways makes it to the top of our list of the best web hosting platforms owing to its features like free migration, automated backups, a 99.98% uptime, and a pay-as-you-go structure. However, the competition was certainly a tough one. See for yourself:

1. Cloudways — Overall, the Best Web Hosting Platform for Both Small & Enterprise-level Needs | Put it to the Test with a 3-Day Free Trial.
2. Domain.com — The Best Hosting Platform with Unlimited Storage on Every Plan | Sign Up Today for a Small Monthly Fee.
3. Bluehost — Leading Web Hosting Platform that’s Beginner-Friendly and Comes with Lots of Plugins.
4. GoDaddy — A Popular Hosting Solution with Daily Backups.
5. IONOS — The Fastest Web Hosting Platform with 99.7% Uptime.
6. HostPapa — An Affordable & Easy-to-Use Hosting Service for Small to Mid-size Businesses.

The Best Web Hosting Platforms 2024 | In-Depth Reviews

Are you excited to learn more about our top picks of the best web hosting platforms in 2024? Dig in as we discuss in detail the best features, pros, cons, and pricing of all our best picks.

1. Cloudways — The Best Web Hosting Platform for Both Small & Enterprise-level Needs

Cloudways is trusted by more than 80,000 businesses and agencies worldwide as it is possibly the most convenient way that brings your business to the cloud.

Cloudways has adopted advanced protocols to ensure your website has impeccable performance.

For example, you don’t have to worry about websites crashing out of nowhere with Cloudways. Even if there’s an issue within the servers, it’ll be instantly resolved with auto-healing restarts.

Similarly, you get a much wider scope to optimize your website performance and expand its reach with dedicated servers.

Contrary to shared hosting, Cloudways’s managed-to-host service lets you use its servers to the fullest so that you can deliver uninterrupted service to your users.

As a business owner, you’ll also appreciate the dedicated firewalls provided by Cloudways to protect your business from hackers, viruses, and malware. It does so by installing OS-level firewalls that constantly monitor your online traffic and automatically filter out anything it deems as dangerous.

If you need more security for your Cloudways account, the platform’s 2FA authentication feature, which will add an additional barrier to entry to your account in addition to the main account password, will be your friend. 2FA has been proven time and again to be an effective method of keeping away unauthorized entries.

What’s more, Cloudways’s tech partner Malcare also does its bit to protect your website from bot traffic and brute-force login attacks that can congest the servers, harm your website’s assets and push away original visitors.

Pricing

The lowest Cloudways goes is $10 on its most basic Standard monthly plan. With this plan, you’ll get 25Gb of storage and 1Tb bandwidth, plus free SSL, free migration, automated backups, 24/7 real-time monitoring, and more.

For more storage, bandwidth, RAM, and processor capabilities, choose a premium Cloudways plan, all of which are highly competitively priced.

Try Cloudways risk-free, thanks to its 3-day free trial that doesn’t ask you for your credit card info. Note that Cloudways is a pay-as-you-go service, so you wouldn’t lose any money if you choose to discontinue the service at any point. No risk. No hassle.

2. Domain.com — The Best Hosting Platform with Unlimited Storage on Every Plan

Domain.com has more than 300 domain extensions. Along with the usual .com, .co, and .org, you’ll also find some rather unique options such as .me, .blog, .store, and so on. Together with its web hosting plans, Domain.com makes creating your dream website easier than ever.

Speaking of web hosting, its plans are super affordable and can cover 1 or unlimited websites. Our favorite thing about Domain.com is no matter what plan you choose; you get unlimited storage. This way, there’s no cap to your website expansion — you’ll never run out of space for your content.

As one of the best SEO web hosting providers, Domain.com also promises to give you as much uptime as possible. With up to a 99.99% uptime guarantee, you won’t have to lose your peace over sudden website crashes.

Speaking of website stability, you can also secure your site with a free SSL certificate, just like Domain.com’s.

Another benefit of hosting with Domain.com is that with every hosting plan, you get a free domain. For a small business that’s just starting, financial aid this significant is a godsend.

Along with the main domain, you can also choose as many subdomains as you want. A good number of optimized subdomains will help you amp up your domain authority and provide a unique experience to each customer, which in turn will boost your user satisfaction rate.

As the cherry on top, you also get 24/7 support from Domain.com’s expert team. Starting with installation assistance to problem-solving, you’ll always have help whenever you need it.

Pricing

As one of the cheapest web hosting providers, Domain.com starts at a mere $3.75/month (billed annually). Although the Basic plan supports just one website, it comes with unlimited storage and scalable bandwidth.

If you need support for unlimited websites and more than 25 MySQL databases, and 5 FTP logins (both offerings of the Basic plan), bump your plan up to either the Deluxe or Ultra plan.

The best part? All Domain.com hosting plans provide a free domain name for the first year. Sign up for a plan today.

3. BlueHost — Leading Web Hosting Platform that’s Beginner-Friendly and Comes with Lots of Plugins

Bluehost is one of the oldest and most popular web hosting platforms — an indispensable part of every top web hosting platform list.

What makes it so popular? Its ease of use and intuitiveness magically caters to both beginners and professional web developers equally well.

For instance, Bluehost offers three types of hosting:

• Shared hosting for growing websites
• VPS hosting for mid-level businesses, and
• Dedicated hosting for ultimate control and expansion.

With each plan, you get an all-in-one dashboard where you can build a stunning website from scratch. The interface of this website builder is fairly simple so that even people from non-tech backgrounds can build a beautiful website.

Bluehost is especially well-known for its wide variety of themes and plugins — consisting of 900+ themes in their marketplace and 50k+ plugins (both free and paid).

In case you’re looking for a hosting plan specifically designed for WordPress, Bluehost is the perfect pick. It’s equipped to optimize your WordPress for better speed and stability, ensuring your users have a smooth experience and you have to spend less time on maintenance and repairs.

What’s more, Bluehost makes it super easy for you to move your website from a different hosting provider.

Once you head to the domain management section in your cPanel, it’ll provide you with a simple set of instructions for the domain transfer. Say you still need additional help with website migration — its expert customer support team is just a call away.

Pricing

Bluehost plans are both feature-packed plus affordable. For just $2.95/month (billed annually), its Basic shared hosting plan will get you support for one website, 10Gb SSD storage, 24/7 customer support, plus free domain and SSL for the first year. There’s also a free CDN as well.

However, if you could spend a little more and get the Plus plan at $5.45/month, you’ll enjoy support for unlimited websites and a free domain for the length of your hosting plan, not to mention that your storage will increase too.

Need more high-end features? Get the Choice Plus or Pro plan, both of which come with a host of pro tools like multi-site management, performance insights, and client invoicing.

Bluehost is also one of the few hosting providers to come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Don’t like its service? Ask for a full refund. Try it risk-free today.

4. GoDaddy — A Popular Hosting Solution with Daily Backups

GoDaddy offers a dozen web development products, and some of its most popular services include web hosting, domains, WordPress, web security, and online marketing. If you look closely, you’ll find that all its services, both primary and secondary, are all designed for one big purpose — to help you build and run your dream website.

The best thing about GoDaddy is that it offers daily backups for your site, no matter what plan you’re on. Basically, you get to save your entire site, including the content, emails, and databases, every day. In case there’s an unexpected outage or crash that tampers your data, you can always rely on backups.

Another benefit of using GoDaddy for your website’s hosting is unmetered bandwidth. With higher bandwidth, you’ll be able to transfer large amounts of data quickly, which in turn will give your users better speed and faster download.

There are only two exceptions to this benefit:

• Your site doesn’t comply with their Hosting Agreement, which only happens when the site is used for storage and file sharing alone
• Your site poses a risk to their servers’ stability and speed. In that case, you might have to upgrade your site or have your website resources cut short.

In addition to that, all the plans (except the Starter Pack) come with exciting add-ons for free.

For example, the Economy plan comes with a free domain and a free professional email SSL certificate for one year. If you move up to the Deluxe or Ultimate plan, you can also get unlimited free SSL — GoDaddy always ensures you get your money’s worth.

Pricing

GoDaddy is known for its affordability. Its cheapest web hosting plan will cost you just $3.99/month (it’s a 3-year plan) and fetch you 512Mb RAM and 10Gb storage, unmetered bandwidth, and support for one website like most services’ basic plan.

However, the Starter plan doesn’t come with an SSL certificate that only becomes available starting from the Economy plan.

Our recommendation as far as premium GoDaddy plans go is the Ultimate plan, priced at $12.99/month for a 3-year term since it can support 25 websites.

With a generous 30-day money-back guarantee on your side, you can try GoDaddy risk-free to see if it suits your needs.

5. IONOS — The Fastest Web Hosting Platform with 99.7% Uptime

Ionos is a huge name in the web hosting industry, and for a good reason. Managing more than 12 million registered domains and 8 million customers worldwide, Ionos enjoys stellar reviews on every platform and review page.

During our own testing, we found that Ionos websites have an average uptime of 99.7% — you’ll barely ever struggle with unforeseen crashes or outages.

To give your site maximum uptime, Ionos offers geo-redundant hosting services. Under this, your site and its content are reflected in two separate data centers. Even if one of them is undergoing repair and maintenance, you’ll still have the other to keep your site live.

On top of that, Ionos has its very own server shield technology to protect your site from DNS attacks. Another benefit of using Ionos is that it offers unlimited storage right from the basic plan.

Often, web hosting providers limit storage on basic and starter plans so that as the website grows and its content database expands, the users have to pay for extra storage.

However, Ionos is well-equipped to handle a never-ending list of content without charging an extra penny for it.

According to reports published by the web hosting provider, it’s also the fastest among its competitors. With a record-breaking page load time of 1.23 secs, it beats both Bluehost (1.36s) and GoDaddy (1.48s). After all, when it comes to restless internet users and websites, speed is a major difference.

Pricing

IONOS is easily the cheapest web hosting service provider, with its Business plan priced at just $1/month for the first 12 months, following which it’ll cost you a reasonable $10/month. With unlimited websites, storage, and databases at this price point, no wonder IONOS has established itself as one of the most value-for-money hosting providers.

For additional features like SiteScan malware protection, CDN, and maximum CPU & MEM resources, get the Expert plan at just $8/month for the first 12 months.

What’s more, you’ll also get a 30-day money-back guarantee to try the service risk-free before you put your money on the line.

6. HostPapa — An Affordable & Easy-to-Use Hosting Service for Small to Mid-size Businesses

HostPapa and its incredibly cheap plans mostly appeal to small businesses. Sure its features are comparatively limited, but that’s what makes it a good choice for beginners with no technical expertise.

Whether you need to manage one website or unlimited, HostPapa has a dedicated plan for each business size. One of our favorite things about HostPapa is the free services and add-ons it offers on every plan.

For example, on the Starter plan, you get free domain registration and website migration, under which HostPapa experts will themselves transfer your website from the previous host to their servers while you sit back and relax.

Its Website Builder is something you’ll get in all its plans, meaning you don’t have to pay extra to create a website. While almost every hosting provider has their own website builder, what makes HostPapa unique is the simplicity of the tool.

You need absolutely no knowledge of coding and designing, and you can choose from their pre-designed templates, drag and drop the elements, and publish your website within a matter of seconds.

The only thing we didn’t like about HostPapa is that its starter plan doesn’t have Website Staging — a preview that’s essential in testing out a new website before making it live.

But on the plus side, it comes with a load of other benefits, such as 10 free email addresses, a free SSL certificate, a free 400+ apps installer, guaranteed 99.9% uptime, and much more.

Pricing

HostPapa starts at an affordable $2.95/month (3-year plan), where you’ll get support for 1 website, free website migration, free domain registration, 10Gb SSD storage, and more.

For support for unlimited websites and enhanced security features, plus unlimited SSD storage and website staging, get either the Pro or the Ultra plan.

Test HostPapa yourself to see if it meets your requirements. A 30-day money-back guarantee means you won’t be risking any money until you’re absolutely sure of the service.

The Best Web Hosting Platforms 2024 | Compared

Short on time? Here’s a crisp table comparing the top web hosting platforms by highlighting just their main differences so you can arrive at a decision quicker.

How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service Providers

What type of web hosting service do you need for your website? Shared or dedicated servers? Private or managed hosting? For Linux or Windows? Choosing the right web hosting service providers that match your website is important. Here are a few factors to consider:

Type of Hosting

Your provider must be familiar with different types of web hosting services. For new websites, shared hosting is an ideal, low-cost option since your website doesn’t have much traffic. However, cloud hosting and VPS are the best options if you need more bandwidth or computing power to run complex applications on your website.

Next, consider whether your service provider supports managed or unmanaged hosting. Your provider will handle security and software updates if you choose managed hosting services. It is the perfect option for newer webmasters.

SSL Security

You shouldn’t debate on this one. Your site needs to be fully secured if you want users to visit and take action on your website. If your website isn’t secured or compromised by a cyberattack, your visitors’ devices will also be affected.

Google and other renowned search engines will flag your website as compromised or spam even if it is managed by a host that doesn’t take internet security seriously. So, choose a web hosting service provider that closely monitors threats and potential cyberattacks.

Consider the Resources You Need

One of the essential things you need to consider while selecting the right web hosting services is the resources you need. Ask yourself these questions:

• How many professional email addresses do you need with a domain name @ yourwebsite.com? The answer may depend on the number of employees within your organization.
• How much disk space do you require? The answer may depend on how many media elements are on your website. For example, visuals and files.
• How much bandwidth do you need? This depends on the traffic you receive. If your website enjoys massive daily traffic, you must upgrade your bandwidth.

When you’ve answered these questions, you’ll know the resources you need and which web hosting plan is the best.

Web Hosting FAQs

Want to know more? Here are some of the most common questions surrounding web hosting: